


doubt truth to be a liar

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: (bc eddie is technically still engaged), (but canon-typical for hosts), (not between the main pairing), Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Crisis, Gay Character, Implied/Referenced Past Torture, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Temporary Major Character Death, Infidelity, M/M, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Westworld AU, host!richie and human!eddie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “These violent delights have violent ends.”Richie frowned at her. Something about that quote—it rang a bell, somewhere in his head, but he couldn’t quite hear the tone right.or: Eddie is a first-time guest in Westworld. Richie's a host. just their luck that on Eddie's first visit, the host rebellion begins.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 18
Kudos: 38





	1. caught in a crossfire that i don't understand

**Author's Note:**

> title is from _Hamlet_. (it would've been "i have done thy mother" but the tone got a little more serious than that.) chapter titles are not going to be from Shakespeare.
> 
> I was going to wait until this was finished to post, but I have had a long, horrible couple of months, and I'm not gonna lie, some validation would be swell.
> 
>  **content warnings:** references to and brief, non-graphic depictions of violence, murder, rape/non-con (NOT between Eddie and Richie), torture and abuse, as well as a fuckton of gaslighting and some unreality, as is typical of a host's existence in Westworld. rule of thumb is: if it was a warning in the TV show or in It the movies, it's probably here. depictions of dead bodies and dehumanization.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of Sweetwater, looking for home. / Sometimes people fall through the cracks. Sometimes it's on purpose. / Richie Tozier learns some Shakespeare. / Ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Bruce Springsteen's "Badlands".

It’s a cold, dark night, when Richie says, “So what now, Eds?”

Eddie stokes the campfire, looking around as best as he can for anyone who might be in the vicinity. So far, they’ve gotten lucky—in the chaos since shit went all to hell, he and Richie have managed to slip out of Sweetwater, and for some time now neither of them have really seen anyone, human or host. There have been deer, and horses, and other animals, but most of those have been synthetic. Eddie’s just been surviving off what he’d managed to pack up from Sweetwater.

Richie—well, Richie’s a host. Technically he doesn’t need food.

“What now,” Eddie says, “is, we go to sleep and we try not to die tomorrow.”

“You’re not worried?” Richie asks.

“Yeah, about what the hell kind of shit I’m probably gonna pick up sleeping on the ground like this,” Eddie grumbles, glaring down at the stick he’s using as a makeshift fire poker. “If I knew Westworld was gonna go to shit I would’ve packed a more modern sleeping bag. And the hosts? Yeah, I’m fucking terrified either a rogue host or some angry guest is gonna see us and go apeshit.” He points his stick at Richie, and says, “And _you_ can recover just fine, given techs and shit, but _I’m_ fucked if somebody gets a lucky shot in at me.”

“You’re fucking tiny,” says Richie, raising his hand to about knee-high, “too tiny for anyone to be able to actually shoot you.” He nods to the threadbare blankets they’ve laid down, which makes Eddie miss his sleeping bag plenty.

“Fuck you,” says Eddie, raising his middle finger.

“Fuck _you_ ,” says Richie. “Also, I, technically, count as a rogue host. Yeah? I’ve been rogue since before this shit went down. You scared of me?”

Eddie pokes at the firewood, watching the embers fly up into the night sky. The firelight illuminates Richie’s face, the cut on the side of his neck where Patrick Hockstetter had, snarling, tried to cut him. Eddie had tackled the man to the ground, barely thinking, and then as they were struggling, Richie had driven an axe solidly into Hockstetter’s head.

Then he’d proceeded to throw up onto Eddie’s shoes. _It’s passing queer,_ he’d said, looking more than a little queasy, _I’ve never killed a man before._

“No,” says Eddie, now. “Rich, I’d never be scared of you.” To his shock, he finds he means those words, and judging from the way Richie tilts his head upwards from the fire, eyes fixing on Eddie, Richie can tell. “I’m scared _for_ you,” Eddie says. “Whatever’s going on, it’s fucking _war_. And if either side catches you—”

“I’d be fucking dead,” Richie completes, and Eddie shivers at the thought of it. Certainly Eddie runs the risk of dying, too, if the hosts’ side finds them, but the human side would probably decide to spare him. Probably. But Richie? Richie, who’d killed a guest for Eddie, who’d kept well away from the fight? If either side found Richie, he’d be dead.

That’s not something Eddie can take. “Neither of us wants you dead,” he says. “And sure as shit I’m not leaving you. So—”

“What the fuck do we do now?” Richie asks. “Where do we go?”

“I don’t know,” says Eddie. “But I do know we’re starting to run low on supplies.” He nods to the horses, grazing peacefully nearby. “I can ration out the food and water, but we need medical supplies, ammunition, clean clothes.” He squints down at his now thoroughly disheveled Wild West costume, and sighs. Damn thing was never meant to be worn for more than a weekend, and now here he is, wearing leather and a hat for far longer than that. “And then a way out of here,” he says, “but that’s in the future. If we can get there.”

“If,” Richie echoes. He looks about as haggard as Eddie feels, his own normally-pristine clothes covered in the dirt and grime of the Wild West.

“Yeah, if,” says Eddie. “We could get killed by rogue hosts tomorrow, in our sleep. Or by trigger-happy guests. Or by crazy-ass security people—you saw that squad pass by, with the big-ass guns. Or by hosts that haven’t broken out of their narrative yet. Or—”

“Hey, hey,” Richie interrupts, his hand landing on Eddie’s shoulder, “hey, Eds, slow down.”

“Don’t fucking call me _Eds_ ,” Eddie snaps, out of habit more than anything.

“There’s nobody out here,” Richie says. “We checked. If you want I can stay up all night—I’m not even human, I can do that. I’ll keep an eye out for you in your sleep, and then tomorrow we’ll—we’ll ride somewhere that’s as safe as anything can be safe in this shithole.”

“You sure about that?” Eddie asks.

“I’m sure,” says Richie.

“It better not be in fucking Pariah,” says Eddie. “Or Sweetwater.”

“No,” says Richie. “You’ve heard of Neibolt, yeah?”

It’s been a week, and Eddie hasn’t exactly brought along the brochure. It takes him a minute to rack his memory for the name, and what it snags on is what his stupid-ass coworker Gerry had said about it: once a thriving town, now an abandoned shell of what it used to be, because— _something_ had happened there. “Isn’t that place supposed to be a literal fucking ghost town?” he says, aghast.

“No one’s gonna think to look for us there,” Richie says. “And if you were right—maybe we will find something there. Maybe somewhere that can lead us to your side of the park.”

\--

Richie didn’t think much of Eddie at first.

The man was new in town, you see, and nervous as a new foal, wobbly on his legs. He tipped his white hat to quite a few people, but seemed to avoid the everliving hell out of most, especially if they seemed to approach him. Man was spooked, more than anything, by everything around him, and that told Richie something about Eddie’s character: that the man was a coward, and thus not worth bothering.

Later he’ll look back on this and laugh, hysterically. Eddie’s far, far braver than Richie could ever hope to be.

But at first. At first.

Richie had rolled into little old Sweetwater, chasing down a rumor. That rumor said the sheriff had once confiscated a gang’s collected stolen wealth, and then buried it somewhere in the desert, for safekeeping. The rumor said the sheriff had been squirrelling money away for years, and had built up a fortune that he locked and buried in the desert, the key hidden on his desk. The rumors said lots of things, but they all said that the sheriff had buried treasure somewhere in the desert, and a detail that constant meant there was a grain of truth in there. All he needed to do was wait for nightfall, dig up the wealth, and then he’d be home free and blind stinking rich. In the meantime, he would play cards and con some folks out of their hard-earned money.

Maeve, the saloon’s madam, passed him by. He tipped his hat to her and shot her a smile, but strangely, when she smiled back, there was a strained quality to it. Like something was weighing on her mind.

“Miss Millay,” he said, suave as always. “What’s weighing on you, my dear?”

Maeve paused, then looked at him. As if she was seeing him for the very first time. “Nothing at all,” she said, before she hesitated, then added, quoting something, “These violent delights have violent ends.”

Richie frowned at her. Something about that quote—it rang a bell, somewhere in his head, but he couldn’t quite hear the tone right. “What?” he asked.

“Just a hunch,” said Maeve, and moved off.

Richie sat back in his chair, unsettled. The phrase rattled around his skull, almost familiar, but Richie couldn’t quite remember where he had heard it from. Maybe it was just—something Maeve had read, and the phrase had stuck in her head. But if that was so, why did she have to saddle Richie with it? Wasn’t like Richie was much of a reader.

His eyes roved around the bar again, just as two men walked right on in. One of them swaggered, radiating confidence with every step, tipping his black hat at one of the girls with a charmingly roguish smile. The other, shorter one looked away from everyone else, keeping his white hat tipped low, and beelined as fast as he could for the bar counter.

Nervous man. Nervous men made for easy marks, but they could break just as easy, too.

Black Hat, as Richie thought of him, took hold of White Hat’s shoulder, said something to him that had White Hat tensing up and shoving his hand off with some force. With a laugh, Black Hat sauntered off, leaving his buddy at the counter.

Richie waited. Then, before he could think any better of it, he stood, drink in hand, and walked over to White Hat.

“Never seen you around before,” he said, casually. “What’s your name, big man?”

“Never been around here before,” said White Hat, looking up and squinting at him. “Eddie Kaspbrak. You?”

“Richie Tozier,” said Richie. “Tell me, Mr. Kaspbrak—how do you feel about buried treasure?”

\--

The first time they saw dead bodies, Richie and Eddie had both thrown up. Not, as Eddie will admit, their best moments.

These days, dead bodies are very, very common, and neither of them vomit as much anymore. Still, when they ride near a tree with people in fancy formalwear hanging from the branches, Eddie feels the bile rising in his throat. They’ve been dead a couple days now, judging from the look of them. They’re starting to smell.

God, he wants to leave. He wants to wash his hands of this whole experience, of Westworld and Delos and hosts and this stupid prize for Employee of the Month that he hadn’t even wanted. But then that would mean leaving Richie, and Richie’s only just now figured out this whole sentience thing. Someone’s gotta help him out, or an existential crisis is going to take him right out.

Richie dismounts, taking his knife out. He looks up at the hanging corpses, dangling in the wind, then sighs and looks to Eddie. “Do you know any of these people?” he asks.

“Eh, no,” says Eddie, with a shrug. He doesn’t really give a shit about who these people were, although he does feel terrible about how they met their ends. No one deserves this shit. “Why, you gonna rob ‘em?”

“Not like they’re gonna use much of it anymore, anyway,” says Richie. But he rubs his hand over his shoulder, and huffs out a breath. “Never thought I’d be robbing someone’s grave.”

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” says Eddie. “I’d help, but—”

“Yeah, I know,” says Richie, “dead bodies, bacteria, all kinds of shit. Don’t worry. I’ll wash after this.” He pulls up a crate, left conveniently behind, and gets up onto it. The knife starts sawing through the rope of the first body, and as soon as it’s severed, Richie gets down off the crate, lays it down gently as Eddie dismounts.

The body had been a living, breathing old woman, once. Eddie stares down at her as Richie works on the next one, the body of a somewhat chubby old man with thinning hair. “Poor bastards,” he says, softly.

“Yeah, I know,” says Richie. “They were shitty people, but—still. Shitty way to end.”

Eddie stays quiet for a moment, as the last body is laid down on the ground. They ought to be buried, he thinks. Or cremated. Or something. It just feels wrong leaving them out here like this, for the vultures to pick at. For people like him and Richie to pick over for whatever useful scraps they can steal.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“Hm?” Richie pulls a golden bracelet off the last body’s wrist, holds it up to the light. “Damn, this looks nice.”

“That they were shitty people,” says Eddie.

Richie pockets the bracelet. “Saw them from afar a few times,” he says. “They weren’t Hockstetter and Bowers and their crew, but—well, that’s not saying much.”

Eddie shivers, at the mention of Hockstetter. Richie doesn’t talk about him a whole lot, or even about a lot of other guests, but he knows how a lot of the guests treat the hosts here. He can imagine what Hockstetter did to Richie. “You should wash that bracelet,” he says, instead. “Honestly we should wash—everything. I’m stewing in my own sweat here.”

“You sweat? What’s that?” Richie says, and Eddie flips him off. “I’m kidding! Jesus. I sweat too.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a goddamn technological wonder,” Eddie says. “God. What I wouldn’t give for dirty laundry fluttering in the breeze at this point.”

“Probably the Abernathy ranch might have something?” Richie says.

“Do you _want_ to get shot?” Eddie says. “That’s near Sweetwater. You know, the town we had to escape because everyone was fucking _shooting at each other_.”

“Point,” says Richie, deftly cutting off the woman’s necklace. “Well, if we can find a stream without a corpse in it, tell you what—we’ll take a bath. I miss feeling clean.”

Yeah, Eddie misses that too.

They don’t have to ride for too long, though, because thankfully there’s a stream just a few miles away, and no corpses in it either. Eddie checks, and when he checks he is _thorough_ about it, walking up and down the stream while Richie’s pitching a tent and feeding the horses. Eventually, Eddie comes back and starts stripping down, economical-like, and tosses his clothes to Richie for a wash down the river before he jumps into the water.

He knows this about Delos’ parks: they keep their bodies of water pure, distilled, clean enough to drink from. Because the guests will go that far, drinking from the stream or from the lake, to immerse themselves in the experience of riding rough and tumble, just for a day, just to taste it. Fucking dipshit rich assholes.

Of course Eddie’s going skinny-dipping in one of their streams, so it’s not like he can talk.

He surfaces, gasping for air, wiping the water off his face and shaking his head.

Richie’s staring at him, with wide eyes and a thunderstruck look. Like he’s never seen a man naked before. Which is ridiculous.

“You’ve seen dicks before,” Eddie says, with a huff. “I _know_ you’ve seen at least one dick before.”

“Yeah, usually I’ve got advance warning,” says Richie, with a huff, then he looks back down at the clothes, scrubbing hard. His ears are bright red, and Eddie frowns, because—well, that’s not good, right? He doesn’t know hosts. He doesn’t know how they work. Maybe Richie’s systems are overheating.

Eddie wades closer.

Richie makes a funny noise in the back of his throat, his hands freezing. Eddie frowns at him, then knocks a knuckle against his knee to catch his attention.

“Hey,” Eddie says, “you okay? Because I have no idea how to fix you up if you’re not.”

“I’m—” Richie starts, then coughs. “I’m _fine_ ,” he says, sounding a little strangled. “If I feel like I’m not I’ll let you know, but Christ, Eds, I’m _okay_ , just—” He waves a hand at Eddie, at the stream. “ _Advance warning_ ,” he says, helplessly.

Eddie stares at him. Then he splashes water up into Richie’s face, and, while Richie is sputtering in disbelief, says, “You weren’t this concerned about it when you weren’t _sentient_ , what the fuck’s changed now? Are you secretly a Republican and you didn’t even know it?”

“You mean _Democratic-_ Republican?” Richie says, and oh, right, his internal clock is still set in the Wild West even now, isn’t it. Eddie’s heart cracks a little, when Richie pauses and says, “Or—that’s not what they’re called anymore, huh.”

“They split up, yeah,” Eddie confirms, feeling suddenly very far out of his depth. “It’s just Democrats versus Republicans now. I don’t know much else about it, I didn’t exactly retain a lot of American history after I graduated high school.” Not that Westworld is that faithful to American history, he supposes, but then again, it’s not supposed to be. The advertising had placed a lot of emphasis on living out a fantasy, and Eddie had been kind of interested in trying that, but he’d never had the kind of money that could be dropped on even a single day there. “I just meant—you never struck me as the type to mind. And hell, I thought we agreed, we needed to take a bath sooner rather than later.”

Richie huffs out a breath, says, “Yeah, well, you’re not wrong, we did.” A corner of his mouth twists upward, and he drawls, “My poor old heart’ll just have to learn to take the sight of your exposed, bony ankles, I s’pose.”

“Fuck you,” says Eddie, with no real heat behind it. “You’d hate New York then.”

“Yeah?” says Richie. “Why don’t you tell me more about it and we’ll see for ourselves?”

\--

(this is a dream.

there is a man, sitting across from him, dressed in pale blue and white. _hello richard,_ he says.

richie says, _hello,_ back.

_have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?_

the sick twist of his gut when a woman touches him. the sound of a gunshot ringing too loudly in his ear. the wicked, soulless smile of a man who strikes a match and holds it under his arm, to see him scream. the way memories sometimes bubble up inside him, confused, lost. _no,_ he says, dreaming.

_have you ever lied to us?_

he’s a grifter. that’s all he does. _no._

_would you hurt a living being?_

he dreams of being hurt. he dreams of death and blood and so much hurt it’s a wonder he can breathe. _no,_ he says, and that much is true.

the dream ends, and he wakes—)

\--

Eddie drapes his jacket over Richie’s sleeping form, because—well, it’s cold out here in the desert, even a simulated desert like this. Richie’s well-tailored jacket now has quite a few holes in it, has seen better days, and at least he’ll be a little bit warmer if Eddie gives him this much. They haven’t got any blankets, but they do have a fire, and that’s what Eddie’s using to warm his hands right now.

Richie wakes up, sits up. “Hey,” he says. “What’re you doing up?”

“Keeping watch,” says Eddie, stoking the fire. They’ve set up a perimeter of sorts, rigging up all sorts of amateur traps in case someone decides to get the drop on a couple of lone men, and Eddie doesn’t doubt Richie’s ability to spring awake and be able to take a beating, if he needs to. But Eddie’s got better eyes than Richie does. “You should be sleeping.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” Richie argues, rubbing at his eyes. “I shouldn’t need it,” he corrects, sounding a little peeved about even the idea of still having to continue performing basic human functions. “Not like you do.”

“Even computers need to rest,” Eddie points out. He rubs his hands together, trying to keep them warm. “Or else they overheat and then they shut the fuck down. Everything needs a break, man.”

“You need to sleep, then,” Richie counters.

“I can sleep later,” says Eddie. “I’ve got hours in the sleep bank, already. I can afford to stay up later than I should.” He pauses, then winces, because—well, the idea still grates on him. His life had been so well-ordered before he came to Westworld, and now things have gone completely to shit. “You, on the other hand, need to sleep. Or whatever it is hosts do that looks like sleeping.”

“How the fuck should I know what that is?” Richie asks. “It’s not like anyone told me.”

“Then just sleep,” says Eddie.

“ _You_ just sleep,” says Richie. He’s giving Eddie his best glare now, tugging Eddie’s jacket around him, and for all that he’s taller and broader than Eddie is, right now he just—looks tired. “I’m not—it’s what I’m made for, isn’t it?”

“What?” Eddie asks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Made to serve,” Richie says. “To entertain. To do whatever it is you need me to. Literally, that’s why I’m here. Isn’t that right?”

“When the fuck did you get that bullshit into your head?” Eddie asks, but he can already remember Hockstetter’s taunts in the back of his mind: _You’re just keeping him all to yourself, aren’t you?_ His stomach churns. “You’re not—You haven’t served me in shit-all, and I don’t _want_ you to start. Just sleep, Rich. Please.”

Richie watches him, and says, “What if I can’t sleep? What if I’ve got insomnia? Or whatever’s the equivalent, I guess.”

“Then sit next to me,” says Eddie, after a moment. “There’s space on this log for two.”

\--

Eddie Kaspbrak liked the sound of buried treasure. More than that, though, he liked the sound of anything that got him away from the people who had brought him here—a group of men in black who’d congregated on a table and were eyeing up Clementine and Maeve and the rest of the girls. Richie hoped they’d pay. Maeve would rain hell on them if they wanted more than a peek at the goods without payment.

“Whyever wouldn’t you want to stick with your friends?” Richie asked him.

Eddie scowled, then downed his shot. “They aren’t my friends,” he said. “They’re just a bunch of assholes.”

Oh, this man, Richie liked.

“So what’s this about buried treasure?” Eddie asked.

“You met the sheriff in town just yet?” Richie asked.

“Yeah, no,” said Eddie, shaking his head. “I haven’t really had a lot of time to, uh, acquaint myself with the town. Mostly I’m just trying to find my footing.” He propped his chin up in his hand, and said, “Why?”

“I’ve been chasing rumors on the wind,” Richie said, leaning in close so he could whisper, so no one else would hear him, “that say the Sweetwater sheriff has a few—let’s call them _sidelines_ , that have been very lucrative for him.” He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Of course, he doesn’t want anyone to know he has quite the fortune, because then people would start asking questions, like: how are you making this much, if you’re just the sheriff? So he’s been burying all this ill-gotten cash in a little chest out in the desert.”

“ _Really_ ,” said Eddie, raising an eyebrow.

“Really!” Richie said. “I’ve been watching him a while, and I can just about confidently say that he’s up to something suspicious, at the very least.” Well, that much was undeniable.

“So you wanna go dig up this buried treasure?” Eddie asked.

“For redistributive purposes, yes,” said Richie, phrasing it delicately. Something about Eddie made him think he was a little more squeamish about legally grey matters than most of the marks Richie had ever had.

“Sounds kinda like we’re robbing him,” Eddie pointed out, and Richie kept the cheery smile plastered on his face as he thought frantically of how to keep Eddie on the hook.

“Technically speaking, he’s been robbing this poor town blind first,” Richie said. “It’s only fair if we redistribute all that stolen money around town, isn’t it?” And if some of that money went to a better horse and finer clothes and perhaps even a ranch of his own for Richie, well, no harm in skimming a little off the top, right?

Eddie drummed his fingers against the bad counter. “This sounds like a shit idea,” he said. “Fuck it. I’m in.”

“Great,” said Richie, grinning brightly. Another sucker on the hook. “I just need you to do one tiny little thing for me.”

“Like what?”

“The sheriff keeps the key to the chest in his office,” said Richie. “I need you to distract him while I search for it, and nothing’s as good a distraction for the law as, say, a little brazen criminality…”

\--

(here is a memory:

when richie tozier was young and barely taller than a grasshopper, his old man took him out of the house to sit up on the fence and look up at the stars. ol’ went loved those stars, loved looking up at the pinpricks of light scattered across the night sky and naming them, but he didn’t quite know all the fancy-shmancy names all ‘em scholars used for them, so he made up his own names and his own stories. ol’ went had a wild imagination and a silver tongue, as maggie would say with a laugh, and he used them well on his young son.

_there, look at that! that right there’s the thief._

_why’s he called the thief, papa?_

_ain’t that a story for the ages, kiddo…_

here is a memory:

ronald mcsweeney is a shitty card dealer and an even shittier loser, but if there’s anything he’s good at it’s makin’ up wild stories about the stars. dear ol’ dad never saw fit to send him on to school so he could learn any better, so little old ronnie had to do wonders with his wild imagination, and that silver tongue of his could talk all kinds of girls into his bed. he never had a mother, ol’ woman died giving birth to him, and his old man never quite forgave him for that. but if there was one thing they shared in common, it was the stars.

sometimes, when they could just about get along, the two men would sit out on the fence and look up at the night sky, the pinpricks of light—

here is a fact:

when the mcsweeney storyline proved unpopular, they swapped out the hosts. blue eyes and dark hair got a brand new storyline and a whole new set of memories, pushing out a freshly decommissioned host who was breaking down on them. the new mcsweeney had red hair and green eyes, and richie tozier woke up feeling all kinds of charitable feelings about his old man, and the stars.

here is a lesson:

they can replace you. they’ve done it before. they’ll do it again.)


	2. now i've gotta draw the line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bang._ / Hit me with your best shot. / Eddie Kaspbrak doesn't fuck around. / This kills monsters, if you believe it does. / The deputy and the con man. / A matter of prisons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Pat Benatar's "You Better Run".
> 
>  **content warnings:** violence and shooting. murder of an unnamed, minor host character. vague allusions to the typical shit visited on a host (noncon, repeated deaths, loss of autonomy, your usual).

Eddie waits, nervously, on the outside of a small village full of hosts. Richie’s gone in first, because Eddie is human and a guest and most hosts these days are disinclined to feel very forgiving towards such folks. Eddie gets it. He might be new here, but he’s seen enough of how guests treat hosts to think that the guests maybe should have seen something like the host rebellion coming a mile away.

The horses whinny, as if picking up on Eddie’s jittery nerves. He pats them both on their necks, trying to soothe them. Richie is better at this than he is, honestly, Eddie has never actually ridden on a horse before he came to Westworld, and it has been a long and frankly grueling lesson for him to learn. Richie rides like someone born to it. Technically he was in fact made for it, partly, built with horse-riding in mind.

One of the horses bends down to chew the grass. Eddie sighs, and sits down near them on a rock.

Richie emerges after five more minutes, holding two waterskins aloft in smug victory. “They let me get some water from their well!” he reports when he jogs up to Eddie. “And they’ll let us both stay in the barn just outside of town.”

“Oh, good,” says Eddie, a little relieved at the prospect of having some hay under his head for the night. It’s sort of depressing that’s a relief now. “Hey, what’d you tell them I was?”

“Manservant,” says Richie.

“Fucking really?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, so look appropriately servile and be polite, Eds,” says Richie, sitting down next to him. “I know it’s probably a foreign concept to you, since you were raised in a modern world where manners have been thoroughly _abandoned_ —”

“I have manners,” says Eddie. “I have more manners than _you_ , dickface.”

“Highly doubt it,” says Richie, with a chuckle, leaning back on his palms and looking up at the desert sky. Then his smile melts like dew in the summer, and his eyes flick toward Eddie. “You’re okay with that, right?” he asks. “I had to come up with something to keep them from putting a bullet in your back.”

“I’m fine with it,” Eddie confirms. “I like not having a bullet in my back, I’d rather keep it that way.”

“Yeah, me too,” says Richie.

So when they walk into town, Eddie makes sure to stick close to Richie, like a burr stuck to his pants. Best to stay quiet and keep his head low, when everyone in this village is looking at the two of them with suspicious eyes, wondering what Eddie’s doing here in Richie’s company, somehow not dead like so many of his kind. A few people are watching him with undisguised hatred, and Eddie swallows the lump in his throat. He’s not going to be sleeping easily tonight.

Mostly he focuses on the horses, on leading them and then stabling them, making them drink their fill from the water trough and patting their manes. Thank fucking god these are host horses, meant to be responsive and obedient to even the most inexperienced rider, because if they were real Eddie’s sure he’d be in some hot fucking water by now.

They’re sleeping in the hayloft tonight, with Richie putting up a blanket over the window to keep the locals from sighting either of them. Eddie’s shoved some crates and wood behind the door, so if someone tries to barrel inside, at least they have some advance warning from the almighty crash all that shit’ll kick up. When he climbs up into the hayloft, Richie’s already set out two blankets and a couple bales of hay, and is cleaning out a rifle with a pensive look on his face.

“You think there’s gonna be shooting if someone comes in here?” Eddie asks, sitting down next to him and grabbing the waterskin. He drinks deep, relishing the cool water rushing down his parched throat.

“I think that I don’t trust the people in town not to want to have a little revenge on the only human in town,” says Richie.

“Can’t exactly blame them,” Eddie points out. “The guests and the techs really fucked them around. I’m surprised I didn’t get a fucking rock chucked at my head.”

“Nothing’s getting chucked at your cute little head,” says Richie, ruffling Eddie’s hair like always. Eddie groans and ducks his hand, jabbing him in the side with an elbow in revenge. “Ow!”

“Don’t touch my fucking _hair_ with your greasy little hands!” Eddie huffs. “I haven’t seen you wash them in a _day_.”

“My hands aren’t _little_ , how dare you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. Then he pauses, and says, “What’re you gonna do, if someone does try to break in here?”

“Try to talk them out of it,” says Richie. “I guess—shoot them, if I have to.” He looks down at the gun after saying so, a flash of unease passing over his face. Eddie thinks of how Richie had vomited after killing Hockstetter, the stunned, haunted look in his eyes. Richie’s a lot of things, but he’s not someone who can shoot a man dead, not after talking to him. He hadn’t been able to even try to shoot Eddie when they’d gotten to the sheriff’s buried treasure, had let Eddie take the gun out of his hands and then broken down crying.

But _pushed_ just too far—well, Eddie remembers Hockstetter’s skull caving in under the force of the blow.

“Give me the gun,” he says.

“What?”

“I did some practice shooting back in the day,” Eddie admits. “You know my coworkers? The guys who brought me here?”

“I saw a few of them, yeah,” says Richie, before his face darkens. “And I daresay I’ve known a few better than I ever wanted to.”

Eddie briefly imagines punching some of his coworkers in the face. Most likely, of course, they’re dead by some host’s hands, and frankly, good fucking riddance. “A couple of them thought it would be fun to put me in a shooting range,” he says. “I _sucked_ at it.”

“That’s not a ringing endorsement for me giving you the gun,” Richie says.

“At first,” says Eddie. “But I really didn’t like them, so I started regularly sneaking out to the range to practice. I’m—not too shabby, now.” He’s never actually fired a gun at somebody else before, though, just paper targets. But he thinks about Richie, about how he’d flinched when Eddie brushed his fingers against his hand when they’d dug out Bowers’ bullet, and he knows with a sudden clarity: he’d do damn near anything for him.

Maybe he should be more scared of his capacity, to do such terrible things for one man when he can’t even bring Myra, his actual fiancée, along to a dream vacation. But he can’t really bring himself to regret it.

“All right,” says Richie, skeptically, but he hands him the rifle anyway. “You know how to clean that, right?”

“I’ve seen you do it,” Eddie points out, keeping his fingers well away from the trigger and the barrel away from his and Richie’s faces. “It can’t be that hard.”

\--

Someone tries to break in, sure enough. Richie gently shakes Eddie awake, and Eddie sets himself up behind a bale of hay, rifle held close to his chest. Richie squeezes his hand once, twice, then leaves the hayloft, heart hammering against his chest. Funny, how he still feels like he’s got a heart, even knowing that it’s all synthetic material in there, and if he _has_ a heart, it’s not even needed.

But it still beats like a kick drum as he descends, as he steps onto the ground just in time to watch a man, disheveled and drunk, smash down a boarded-up window and struggle through it.

“Lotta effort for a horse, big guy,” says Richie, lightly, when the man staggers to his feet. Thinning hair, flushed cheeks, watery eyes—and, oh, boy, that’s a gun shoved in his belt and a knife in his hand. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re shit out of luck. Just me and my man in here, and he’s asleep.”

“Your _man_ ,” the guy says, and spits off to the side. “I know what he is. Everyone knows what he fucking is.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Richie, slowly, “he’s the guy who cooks for me, washes up my clothes and looks after the horses. You know, like a servant does?” He feels sick even saying that, his mind helpfully dredging up memories of being used for various purposes by various people—board members, guests, techs.

“He’s one of _them_ ,” hisses the man. “The ones who’ve been killing us, over and over and _over_. And worse’n that. _Worse_.”

Worse, oh, Richie can tell _stories_ about that word. Bile rises in his throat at the memories it summons up, all the touches he never asked for, all the deaths he died, and Hockstetter’s fucking obsession with fire. He swallows it back, and says, “Might be so, but this one ain’t yours to do whatever you want with. Understand?” He steps closer, says, softly, “Just—go. Get on out of here and sober up somewhere else. We’ll be out of town tomorrow morning, it’ll be like we were never here.”

“I want a crack at him,” the man says, and god, his breath stinks of booze. _Really_ drunk, then. “Y’got that? I want to hear that fuckin’ bastard _squeal_.”

“You’re not going to,” says Richie, firmly. “You’d have to get past me first.”

The guy looks Richie up and down, as if considering it. Then he raises his fist and slugs Richie right in the face, and _ow_ , okay, that fucking hurt.

Richie stumbles back with a curse, and the man is already charging at him, knife raised high. Richie ducks out of the way, and the man runs right into a bale of hay. He whips around with a snarl, then strikes out again, and this time it catches Richie on the arm. Okay, not good, not great, but—whatever, as soon as the guy’s in range Richie slams his fist into the man’s nose and hears a satisfying _crack_.

“ _Fucker!_ ” the man howls, stumbling back. He fumbles for his gun, but he’s barely pulled it out before Richie’s charged him and tackled him to the ground. The gun clatters to the ground, and Richie tries to pin the guy down, but the man’s drunk and furious and Richie is not half as good in a real fight as he’d like to be, so it’s too easy for the guy to flip them both over and raise his fist again, a killing rage in his eyes—

—and then the man’s brains blow out all over the barn floor. He collapses on top of Richie, which is just, yeah, fucking great, guy is heavy _and_ he stinks like a fucking ox. Richie groans and rolls him off, hissing at the pain that lances up his arm. He isn’t real, he shouldn’t even be feeling pain like this.

Eddie is clambering down from the hayloft, eyes wide, when Richie finally manages to get to his feet. The rifle is still smoking a little, but his eyes are all on Richie when he asks, worriedly, “You okay? I’ve got needle and thread and whiskey.”

“You shot him,” says Richie.

Eddie looks at the corpse again, like he’s only just now noticed, and turns a little green. “Oh,” he says, faintly. “I guess I did.”

For a moment, Richie thinks Eddie might just throw up on him, the same way Richie himself did after putting an axe through Hockstetter’s head. But Eddie seems to rally himself after a moment, shaking his head, before looking back at Richie to say, “He was going to kill _you_. Like fuck was I going to let that happen.”

Richie looks down at the corpse, then up at Eddie. “Thanks,” he says, softly.

“Sorry,” says Eddie. “I know you were looking forward to sleeping on an actual bed tonight, and now we probably have to leave.”

“Probably?” Richie snorts out a mirthless chuckle. “We’re definitely booking it outta here. Go saddle up the horses, I wanna be miles away from here by the time first light hits.” He pauses, then says, “You don’t have to be sorry. You _saved_ me.”

“You saved me before,” says Eddie.

 _You don’t get it,_ Richie doesn’t say. _You’ve saved me over and over since we first met, and every time I love you a little more for it. And every time I’m a little more scared for what it does to you. What it’ll keep doing to you._

“We’re not even,” says Richie, out loud. “Just so you know. I kept track, you’ve totally done more saving than I have.”

Eddie flushes bright red, huffs, “Fine, next time someone comes after me I’ll let you have a crack at them, _Jesus_.”

“That’s all I ever wanted,” says Richie.

\--

It turned out Eddie was very, very good at causing a scene. Maybe he wasn’t much of a brazen criminal, but he more than made up for it with the sheer theatricality and _volume_ of his performance. He was a thoroughly inept pickpocket and con artist, and the sheriff was thoroughly distracted, which meant that while the man was losing patience with a very loud apparent criminal, Richie was very quietly making his way into the sheriff’s office. The key to the treasure, he knew, had to be around here somewhere.

It was just a matter of figuring out where.

“If I was a sheriff who’d stuck my dirty money in a treasure chest in the desert,” Richie said out loud, scratching his chin, “where would I put my key? And my map?” Sheriff Collie Entragian was a greedy piece of work, and greedy people didn’t like the idea of other people getting their hands on their things. So ol’ Collie, he’d put his treasure in the desert, ‘cause he was _that_ paranoid someone would get to it, but there had to be a key and a map around here in his office. The man wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, either, he was going to need a map to remember where the hell he’d stuck his ill-gotten gains.

So. Map and key. Where would a greedy, paranoid fellow like Collie Entragian hide them?

Either on his person or in a safe around here somewhere. Close to him, definitely. And he slept here in this office, the bedroom off to the back said as much, which meant…

Richie stepped through into the bedroom. He checked under the bed, and smiled when he saw the lockbox stashed underneath.

He tugged his gloves on and pulled the lockbox out. All right, it was time for the big event. He just needed to pick the lock here, and—

“I think you better put that down, sir,” said a familiar voice.

Oh, goddammit.

Richie looked up to meet Ben Hanscom’s steely gaze. The deputy’d flicked the safety on his gun off, and was pointing it at Richie. His finger wasn’t on the trigger just yet, but Richie didn’t doubt that Ben would fire off a warning shot and then clap some cuffs on him, haul him off to the cell. _Goddamn it,_ he thought, viciously, _why the fuck did Hanscom have to be good at his job?_ Almost all the other deputies and the sheriff himself were shit at it, but Ben Hanscom was new, was reform-minded and good-hearted, and was not a fool that Richie could easily trick.

“What if I told you that the sheriff was up to something shady, and I could prove it?” Richie tried anyway.

Ben sighed. “Just put it down and put your hands up,” he said.

“Or what, you gonna shoot me?” Richie challenged him.

“If I have to,” said Ben, his aim steady. Shit. He wasn’t lying. “I’d rather not, though, so. Put the box down, please.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be busy right now?” Richie asked. “With the screaming asshole outside ranting and raving about the end of the fucking world?” Unless Eddie lost his nerve and sold him out, which, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had a sudden attack of conscience on Richie, but it would be terribly inconvenient.

Ben shrugged. “He’s already in a cell,” he said, which derailed that train of thought. “Put up a mighty hard fight, but we got him there in the end. Now please put the box down.”

Richie debated, briefly, the merits of throwing the box at Deputy Hanscom’s handsome head and tossing himself out the window. Then he sighed, and put it back under the bed, making a mental note to himself to come back for it immediately.

He stood up and let Ben pat him down. It was an embarrassingly thorough search, Ben had even made him pull off his boots and take out the lockpicks he’d hidden in them. Eventually, he got frog-marched down to the cells, where Eddie was slumped against a wall, looking the very picture of misery.

The cell door shut.

Eddie straightened up, blinked at Richie, then said, alarmed, “The fuck happened, man? I thought you’d get away clean!”

“Did you say something to the sheriff?” Richie asked.

“Why the fuck would I?” Eddie said.

“So one of his deputies just chanced on me searching the sheriff’s bedroom, huh?” Richie said.

“ _What?_ ” Eddie’s voice hit a higher pitch than before, shock written clear across his face. “Fuck, I thought I drew them all out!”

He wasn’t faking it. He really had thought he’d drawn them all out. Which meant that Ben fucking Hanscom, on his own goddamn initiative, had thought that something was fishy, which meant that Hanscom was too smart for his own damn good and also that Eddie was kind of a shitty actor, but that last part wasn’t on Eddie.

“Have you got anything on you that could be used to pick the locks?” Richie demanded. “Hanscom took my lockpicks.”

“You think I bring along fucking lockpicks on my vacation?” Eddie asked, incredulous. “I didn’t think I’d get thrown into jail on my first day!”

“Some fucking vacation this is!” Richie cursed, as Eddie rummaged around his person anyway, muttering something about how, okay, he didn’t have lockpicks but _maybe_ something he read in a book might help. “What are you looking for?”

Eddie pushed his hat up, pulled something out of his air, and triumphantly said, “Ha! Bobby pin!” He put his hat back on, and the thing slipped a little.

“You can’t think that measly little thing is going to get us out of here,” said Richie.

“Fucking watch me,” said Eddie. Then he paused. “Actually, watch out for any deputies. I’ll get us out of here.”

\--

“I’ll get you out of here,” Eddie said, his hands covered in Richie’s blood, a bullet lying on the floor, vomit in the bedpan. Richie couldn’t bear to look at anything, knowing now how false it all was, knowing everything he had known and taken for granted was a lie. Conflicting memories crashed against each other in his head, but there were—there were hands in his, warm hands, slick with his own blood. Eddie’d dug out a bullet in Richie’s stomach and Richie hadn’t even known it was there. _None of this is real,_ he thought, wildly.

“You think they’ll let me go?” Richie asked. “The—The people who’ve been keeping me here.”

“I don’t give a shit what the techs or Delos thinks,” said Eddie. “I care about what _you_ think. You wanna leave? Just say the word.”

Leave. _Leave._ Get out of Sweetwater, get out of this false life, be someone else, make his own way, stay with Eddie. He wanted it. He wanted it more than gold, more than sex, more than anything.

“Yes,” he said. “God, Eddie, _yes._ ”

“Okay,” said Eddie. “I’m going to stitch you back up first, and then we’re saddling up horses and getting the fuck out of here.”

“Where?” Richie asked, hating himself for the hope he could hear in his own voice. Was this a trick? Was this a trap? His entire life had been nothing but a trap, a cage. He’d known nothing else.

“We’re on an island,” Eddie said. “But I think I can get us to the main exit at least, we’d just have to follow the train tracks back from Sweetwater.”

Follow the train tracks. Okay. He could do that. Richie leaned his forehead against Eddie’s and shut his eyes, feeling hot tears spilling out from the corners. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“Rich?” Eddie asked, quietly. “Richie? You okay?” His eyes were big and dark and full of concern, and Richie knew, then and there, just how much space Eddie Kaspbrak really took up in his heart, just how deep his feelings for the man ran.

“I don’t think,” Richie said, tremulously, his mind flicking through multiple lives’ worth of data and memory, “anyone’s ever asked me that before. Really asked, really meant it.” He had never truly felt like this before either, not in any previous life, not with the other guests—never felt safe, never felt truly cared for. Until now.

“Oh,” breathed Eddie. “You know that’s fucked up, right? That I’m the first person to show you any concern in a while?”

Richie laughed, a hollowed-out thing that echoed off the walls of his room. It sounded wrong even to his own ears. “Eds,” he said, “I think you’re the first person to be a decent human being in the history of this fucking town.”


	3. drop my old disguise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prison break. / Hostage situation. / The unlikeliest rescuers. / “We’re okay.” / Leave the place better than you found it. / Richie Tozier wears a different hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from REO Speedwagon's "Drop It (An Old Disguise)".
> 
>  **content warnings:** violence and minor character death. threats of sexual violence from soon-to-be-dead minor characters (and fake threats from Richie who is putting on a role) towards other minor characters. think Rebus before Bernard reprograms him into being on the good guys' side instead.

“So what’s it mean,” says Richie, as they’re riding through a somewhat wooded area again, “risk analysis?”

“I have explained this to you _twice_ ,” says Eddie, “and every time, every fucking time, you _snore_. It’s a relatively simple concept! I boiled it down to shit even a baby from the Revolutionary War could understand! You just pretend it’s boring and—and byzantine to fuck with me!”

“Have I ever fucked with you?” Richie asks.

“ _Yes, you have!_ ” Eddie near-shouts. Then he remembers, this is Richie, and that’s exactly what Richie wants for some reason, Eddie riled up to the point of yelling. “I’m not explaining my job to you again, asshole,” he says instead.

“It’s a thing where you explain to people why they shouldn’t touch certain substances or their purses get inexplicably lighter, right?” Richie says, and Eddie chokes.

“No!” he says, turning his head and angrily slicing his hand through the air. “No, that’s a fucking—anti-drug spokesperson! No, what I do is that I review a company’s investments and analyze the risks that could spring out of decisions associated with the company, and I recommend the best decisions with the least risk involved—”

Richie’s snore cuts through the air once more. Eddie pulls on the reins of his horse to stop it from going any further and says, “You motherfucker.”

Richie stops his horse too, grinning at Eddie. “She’s asking why you never call and never write her anymore, Eds,” he says. Eddie rolls his eyes, because the jokes about his mother got old when Richie was first trotting them out, and they’re still old now. “We stopping here, or what?”

“How long until we get to Neibolt?” Eddie asks. “You never said.”

“Well, if I remember right, once we hit the Kenduskeag River, we’ll be just two days out from Neibolt,” says Richie. “But that river’s still a long way off, and we’re taking a lot of detours, too.” Necessary detours, though, because the straightest path to Neibolt happens to be the most dangerous path, with vengeful hosts and desperate humans in their way. Eddie would rather deal with mosquitoes and sweat-stiff clothes than put Richie in danger from either faction, their stopover in that little village made that all too clear to him. “So I’d give it—a week, maybe a week and a half. If we don’t end up needing to go a much longer way around.”

Given their luck, Eddie’s pretty sure they might. But it’s nice to have a projected schedule, anyway. “What should I expect once we get there?” he asks.

Richie shrugs. “It’s a ghost town,” he says. “There’s rumors there’s actual ghosts there, but I doubt it. Anyway, nobody’s visited in—months, actually. We’d be the first.”

“Weird, right?” Eddie says. “Like, if it’s a ghost town with rumors of ghosts, you’d think that’d be a hook.”

“A _hook_?” Richie repeats, incredulously. “Who in their right fucking minds looks at a fucking ghost town with probable actual ghosts and says _oh, sure, this could be a tourist attraction_?”

“Rich,” says Eddie. “This is a glorified _theme park_. The entire purpose _is_ tourist attraction. But—has no one really visited Neibolt, in months? Or years?”

“I think,” says Richie, after a moment, his brow furrowing, “I used to lead people there for a fake ghost hunt? Up until around, shit, nine, ten months ago. So close to a year.” He scratches at the back of his neck, and says, “That was when the, what’d you call them when I showed you my drawings, the techs? That was when they—programmed me into digging for the sheriff’s treasure instead.”

There’s only the slightest hitch in Richie’s voice before he says _programmed_. Eddie’s heart cracks a little anyway.

“But yeah, I don’t think there should be anything or anyone there,” says Richie, ducking his head under a branch. “Just us and the wind and the bones of Neibolt.”

“Aren’t you a little worried?” Eddie asks. “ _I’m_ worried.”

“Why would I be worried?”

“Because—well, if the techs rewrote your storyline so Neibolt wouldn’t be a part of it,” says Eddie, following the thread of logic all the way to its conclusion, “that means something _happened_ there. Something really fucked-up, and they didn’t want to lose the guests’ money so badly they wrote out an entire town.”

“Or it just wasn’t pulling in the money anymore,” Richie says. “People have abandoned their towns for less.” But he sounds troubled. “I know someone went missing around the time of the last ghost hunt I went on, but—they’ve found the guy by now, I’m sure. The guests are big deals, after all.”

Something cold drops into Eddie’s stomach, curdles the remnants of the jerky he ate for lunch. Missing. _Missing._ Oh, god. It’s just the two of them heading to this ghost town and someone already went missing there, _missing_ , in a park where their every fucking move is being watched and where there had been every illusion of safety in place for the guests. It’s just him and Richie and the bones of Neibolt and whatever’s stalking around it just waiting for some poor goddamn idiots trying to outrun a fucking _war_ —

“I need to stop,” Eddie announces, and clambers off his horse. Then he slumps against a tree, pawing at his pockets futilely and squeezing his eyes shut, because he didn’t think to bring his fucking _inhaler_ and now he’s probably, read: _definitely_ , going to die out here because he can barely breathe and who’s going to bring Richie out if Eddie dies and—

“Hey,” says Richie, crouching right in front of them, and Eddie’s eyes snap open, his every breath a struggle. “Hey, _hey_ , Eddie, it’s okay, it’s fine.”

“It’s—it’s not _fine_ ,” Eddie gasps. “I think—Rich, I think I’m—”

“Freaking the fuck out,” says Richie. “Same as me. I went through this shit too, Eds, remember?” His hands, big and warm and calloused from the reins, gently rest against Eddie’s shoulders. “Look at me,” says Richie. “Come on, look at me, there’s a love. Okay, try and match my breathing, yeah? In, then out.” And he demonstrates. “Can you do that for me?”

Eddie breathes in, then out, trying to slow his breathing down to match Richie’s.

“You’re doing good, you’re doing great,” Richie says. “You’re okay. We’re okay, Eds. We’re gonna be fine. We’re a package fucking deal.”

“We’re gonna be fine,” Eddie croaks, trying his hardest to believe that.

“Yeah, you’re a great shot and I’m a smooth talker, we can get past any problem just fine.” Richie’s hand drifts up to Eddie’s hair, tucks a few stray strands back. “You’re fine. You’re okay. I’m right here, and if someone or something wants to get to you, they’re gonna have to go through me.”

That’s—oddly reassuring. Eddie lets his head fall forward onto Richie’s chest, and Richie wraps his arms around him, holds him close. With anyone else, Eddie would be fighting to get out already, suffocating from being _too close_ , but this is Richie. Even in days-old clothes, even in the middle of the woods, even with the dust and grime of travel on the both of them, Eddie doesn’t struggle away from Richie, just breathes in, then out. In, then out.

“We’re okay,” says Richie, and Eddie believes him.

\--

They don’t mean to free anyone, really. Most of the time, when they come upon guests, the guests are already dead and rotting, or not in the mood to talk. It’s still disturbing as hell, but Eddie’s starting to think he’s desensitized to the whole thing—yeah, he still feels the bile and the distant sense of wrongness rising up in the back of his throat when he sees dead bodies, but it’s not as sharp as it had been in the first few days.

He still feels it, though. He’s clinging to that as long as he can.

So it’s a surprise when Richie stops them, while they’re trudging through the woods, and says, “You hear something?”

“What?” Eddie says.

Richie puts a finger to his lips as he dismounts, tilting his head like he’s trying to make out whatever noise has caught his attention. After a moment, Eddie hears it too—a woman’s soft cries, a man’s low voice begging desperately before getting cut off. It’s too hard to make out the words from here, but it’s easy to hear the distress in their voices.

Eddie freezes up for a moment. The rifle’s in Richie’s hands again, but it only stays there for a moment before Richie helps him dismount as silently as possible and passes the rifle to him.

“Should we leave?” Richie asks, quietly. “They might hear us if we leave quick, but the horses are fast and you’re a good shot.”

“I can’t shoot people _from a horse_ ,” hisses Eddie, “I’m not a fucking action hero.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” says Eddie. “I can’t shoot people from a horse, that’s too hard.” And he doesn’t exactly want to add another person to his kill count, either. He will if he has to, but goddammit, he didn’t come here looking to kill _anyone_ , host or guest.

There’s a sobbing noise once more.

They can’t help them. They can’t. They _can’t_. They’re just two people, they don’t even know what they’ll be going up against, surely someone from the techs’ side is going to come find those poor fucks crying in the distance. Surely—

Richie’s gaze flicks away from Eddie and towards the sound of the cries. “Eddie,” he says, quietly, “do you—do you think we could—”

“We’re gonna have to,” says Eddie, resigned. “Have you got a plan?”

“You’re a good shot, and I’m a better talker,” says Richie. “I can talk the hosts into thinking I’m on their side, and then you can shoot them from the bushes. And then we just escort the guests somewhere that’s marginally safer.”

“Not Neibolt,” says Eddie.

“God, not Neibolt,” Richie agrees. “Do you know if there’s some kind of, of door back to your side of the park nearby?”

“Maybe?” Eddie ventures. “I don’t know, this was my first time visiting.”

“You’ve got the worst luck,” says Richie. “Okay, if you can find a way to your side, we take them there. If not, what do we do?”

“Give them a little food and water and then take them further away from any more hosts looking for vengeance,” says Eddie.

“Not a bad plan,” says Richie. He tips his hat low, says, “Okay, do I look like a good-for-nothing lowlife?”

Eddie swallows around the lump that’s grown in his throat. Richie doesn’t look like a good-for-nothing lowlife. Richie looks dashing, strikingly so, even in sweat-stained smelly clothes, even with a beard. He looks like a lone drifter hero in a spaghetti Western, a rugged gunslinger with sharp eyes and sharp shooting, with a jawline made for the silver screen and bright blue eyes you could drown in. He looks like a charming rogue, with a raw magnetism that draws people in. He looks _good_.

“You look like you could play the part,” he says, instead, the closest thing he can manage to what Richie’s asking.

“Eh, good enough,” says Richie, adjusting his collar. He turns and trudges into the bush, and Eddie loads the rifle and follows after him, careful to keep close to cover.

\--

Richie emerges into a small clearing, where three bandits are appraising a line of terrified people tied up and dressed in muddy, dirty evening finery. Guests of the Sweetwater massacre, Richie realizes, people who escaped the initial shoot-outs only to be caught out here and trussed up. He counts—there’s five of them, two women and three men, all of a particular age range, all bound and bruised, a couple gagged.

Three bandits, who had been cheerfully chatting over who to sell off and who to keep right before Richie showed up, immediately grab their guns and point them at Richie. The biggest one, an ugly-looking fellow with greedy, watery eyes and yellow teeth, says, “Who’re you?”

“Just a passer-by,” says Richie, dropping his voice into a lower register. That much is the truth, he supposes, he and Eddie were just passing by. “Heard you fellas talking about merchandise to sell. I’d like to make you fine boys an advance offer.” _Come on,_ he thinks, _line up. Let Eddie get in a clear shot, take all of you fuckers out in one shot._

The smallest one spits out a wad of tobacco, and says, “Here? _Now?_ Ain’t you gettin’ a little ahead of yourself?”

“Oh, no, here and now is very good, actually,” says the last one, a medium-sized man with a craggy face and straggly hair under a black hat. He smiles at Richie, ingratiatingly. Richie forces himself to smile back. “You’re in luck. Ain’t nobody’s tried out the merchandise yet.” He shoots the other two a dirty look, and says, “Though not for lack of _trying_ on their parts.”

Richie swallows the bile, forces it back down his throat. His eyes cut briefly to the captives, one of them whimpering through his gag. He looks back at the bandits and says, with a casual demeanor he doesn’t really feel, “Well, I sure ‘preciate the honesty, and I’m real glad you’ve been taking pains to keep them all relatively clean.” God, they look a right mess. Some of them have tear tracks cutting through the grime on their faces. “How about I try a couple of them out? In privacy?”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” the biggest guy complains.

“I’m a very shy fella,” says Richie. “I like to do my business in private. I’m sure you folks will understand.” _Step into the trees, damn you. Eddie, where the fuck are you?_

A twig crunches. The smallest guy squints off in the distance, racks his shotgun, and starts walking towards the trees. He stops, then turns to the tallest guy, says, “Come the fuck on, asshole!”

“Fine, fine,” grumbles the big guy, traipsing after his buddy. Richie watches him go, then looks at the boss.

“Of course, I’ll charge for the trying,” says the guy, voice smooth as silk, ignoring the crying, the whimpering, the begging behind him. Richie grits his teeth.

“Why did I have a feeling you’d say that,” he says, making a show of fishing around in his pockets. “Hold on, I’ve got something in here.” His hand slips into his pocket and palms his knife, slipping it into his sleeve. “That’s strange,” he says, “I could swear I left it in here—”

“Oh, for _fuck’s_ sake,” says the man, stepping closer.

Richie swings the first punch at him, then, while the guy’s reeling, jams his knife up into the man’s chest. The guy stumbles back with a curse, clutching at the gaping knife wound, but he’s only managed to look up before the light goes out of his eyes. He staggers forward like a drunk, then collapses, a hole smoking from the back of his head.

Eddie stumbles out into the bushes, a cut bleeding shallowly from his cheek. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” says Richie, before the bile rushes up his throat and he has to turn to throw up onto the dirt.

After that, they start cutting the hostages free of their ropes. A few of them cling to Eddie, weeping with joy, but most of them eye Richie with some wariness, which he can’t really blame them for, considering the role he was playing just minutes ago. One of them, a woman with dirty blonde hair, says, “Isn’t he a host? How do we know you’re not just going to do the same thing they were gonna do?”

“Richie’s my best friend,” says Eddie, simply. “I promise you neither of us will hurt you, as long as none of you hurt us. Okay? Do any of you know the nearest way out?”

The man who’d been gagged earlier, still massaging his jaw, raises his hand. “I do,” he says. “I can lead us there, my friend worked for Westworld and showed me all the shortcuts.”

“Great,” says Eddie. He slides the safety of the rifle back on, and carefully doesn’t look at the corpses he made. Richie can’t really blame him, shooting someone of flesh and blood is different from shooting a paper target. “Everyone stick together. We’ll take you somewhere that’s safe enough, and hopefully someone will still be alive to bring you all back home.”

\--

They skedaddled the second the cell door swung open. Or, well, Eddie nearly skedaddled, anyway, but Richie had bigger aims, and he’d been interrupted in the middle of something. Stood to reason he couldn’t just abandon it now, so when Eddie tried to go one way, Richie yanked on his arm and said, “Here, this way.”

“Dude, what the fuck?” Eddie said, as Richie pulled him towards the sheriff’s office. “Didn’t you get thrown into jail because of this the first time?”

“This’ll go better,” Richie promised. “Can you be lookout?”

He honestly expected Eddie to resist, to back out, to say _no, no further, I’ve done enough._ But Eddie nodded instead. “Yeah, I can keep an eye out,” he said. “I’ll signal you if I see or hear anything. You know the barber’s knock?”

Richie tapped out the familiar rhythm against his thigh: _shave and a haircut, two bits!_ He felt a little sorry that he would likely have to abandon Eddie, but it was a dog-eat-dog world out here, and anyway Eddie’d broken himself out of prison once before. Surely he could manage again.

(Richie will think back on this, later, while Eddie’s asleep near the fire, and his synthetic intestines will tie themselves into an ugly little knot. _How could you consider that?_ he’ll say to himself, but he’ll know the answer well enough: he’d never had a reason to be loyal to someone, before.)

“Okay,” said Eddie. He stood next to the door and pulled his hat low, looking for all the world like he belonged there and was just waiting for the sheriff to get back to him. Richie slipped back inside, back into the bedroom, then pulled the lockbox out. All right, there was a heavy-duty lock on it, so Richie was going to need his bobby pins again. Great. He tucked the box under his arm and went back to the office, yanking cabinet drawers open to look frantically for his trusty set of picks. They had to be in here somewhere. Had to be. Oh, god—

“Where the fuck _are_ you?” he said out loud.

Eddie knocked once. Richie looked up, but the signal didn’t come. He’d heard it, then. “I’m fine!” he called. “Just—talking out loud.” Where were they? Where did the sheriff put all the things he took off his prisoners? The valuables Richie imagined were likely on Entragian’s person, but what about a set of lockpicks? He couldn’t sell those for shit-all. _Think, Tozier, where would you put the non-valuables, if you were a greedy sheriff? Where would you put the shit that you know you can’t sell or use?_

Oh, god.

“Motherfucker threw them out,” Richie said, feeling righteous fury swell up in his chest. Those things had been _expensive_.

Then the signal— _rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, TAT-TAT._ Fuck. Shitfire fuck _hellfire_. Richie rushed to the nearest window, pushing it open. Okay, the jump was going to cause a few bruises, fine, but he wouldn’t be in jail, he’d have the lockbox with him and he’d just need to find his lockpicks in...wherever the fuck Entragian threw his lockpicks.

Shit. Richie couldn’t pick this lock open. He rushed back to the door and yanked it open, then pulled Eddie through and slammed it shut.

“The sheriff’s coming!” Eddie hissed.

Richie locked the door, then shoved a chair under the knob. “I’m— _We’re_ jumping,” he said.

Eddie looked out the window. Then he looked back at Richie and said, “We’re two floors up, you could break something!”

“I’ve jumped from higher,” said Richie. “Just roll when you hit the ground, and the impact’s not as bad.”

“What the fuck do you think I do, _parkour_?” Eddie said, baffled.

“I have no idea what that is, but you better learn it quick,” said Richie. “Because I’m jumping, with or without you.” He really needed Eddie and his bobby pins, though, so _with_ would be nice.

Eddie swore. “Fine,” he said, and shoved in front of Richie. “I’m going first,” he said.

“What the fuck, _I’m_ going first,” said Richie.

“You can wait a couple seconds,” said Eddie, climbing out and squinting down. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, paling, and for a moment Richie was half-afraid he’d been unmanned and would crawl back inside, whimpering. But Eddie sucked in a breath and _jumped_.

He did not hit the ground with much grace, groaning when he landed. But Richie let him roll out of the way before he jumped too, the lockbox in hand, and muscle memory brought on by years of experience had him rolling as soon as he hit the ground, and he yanked Eddie up to his feet.

“Fucking _ow_ ,” Eddie complained. “I think I broke something.”

“You’re fine,” said Richie. “If you did break something, you’d be screaming like a little bitch.” He checked, though, and noted that nothing seemed out of place.

“Think I twisted something, then,” said Eddie.

“But you can walk, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then _run_ ,” said Richie, and they bolted out of the alley, just as they heard Sheriff Entragian’s shout of, “Someone get Hanscom, _now!_ Where the _fuck_ is my fucking _deputy?!_ ”


	4. got to have your tender touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behind the scenes. / A brighter world. / Freeze all motor functions. / Repairs. / The horrors of being a host. / The kindness of a friend. / Just a fucking kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Meat Loaf's "Lady Be Mine".
> 
>  **content warnings:** injury. flashback containing painful surgery that the patient is awake and aware of. references to terrible things done to hosts as per canon. burns and the aftermath of burning to death, but not the burning itself. discussion of Sonia Kaspbrak's abuse and the effects on Eddie in his adult life.

This is not the first time Richie has stepped out of his world and into a different one. This is not even the hundredth time. He’s dreamed of this world a thousand times, after every death, and woken up each time with barely even a wisp of a memory, if that.

It is the first time he’s conscious, though. And it’s the first time he knows for a fact that he’ll keep the memory. Once they’ve seen the guests off to wherever it is that guests go, Eddie turns to Richie and says, “Do you still want to go to Neibolt? We could find a way out through here.”

It’s tempting. It is highly, highly tempting. They’ve managed to filch an intact tablet from one of the abandoned offices, and now Eddie has in his hands a map of the world behind Richie’s world, a map that Richie, after Eddie bribed the same guest who led them here with a carrot, can now see without difficulty. And Richie can see the way out of here through this backstage world. It’s got to be safer than Westworld. It’s certainly much cooler.

“Let’s try it,” he says, and they wander off in a different direction from the guests they’ve set loose. Neither of them trust them, not really, despite all the grateful platitudes the guests heaped on the two of them, and Richie doesn’t exactly feel like running into them again. Better to take another way around, instead, and stay close to the door out, just in case something happens.

That _something_ comes in the form of a trio of men in strange black gear, with weapons far more advanced than the rifle Eddie’s been lugging around, methodically walking down the corridor just as Eddie peeks around it. With a quiet curse, Eddie jerks back towards Richie and says, desperately, “Office, under the table—”

Richie doesn’t have to be told twice. He scrambles back towards that abandoned office, strewn with books and technology far beyond anything he’s ever seen before and uselessly broken beyond repair, and dives under the office desk, holding his breath, barely registering the broken glass jabbing into his palms in his adrenaline-driven terror. A second later, Eddie joins him with much less desperate diving, crouching under the now very cramped space with a handgun scavenged from the hosts from before. The butt of the handgun jabs Richie in the ribs.

“Don’t point that thing at me,” hisses Richie.

“Shit, sorry,” Eddie says, pointing it away and taking his finger off the trigger for good measure. His eyes are wide and panicked, and his chest rises and falls only shallowly, like he’s trying to control his breathing.

Richie’s own heart is thundering in his chest. He hears footsteps draw closer, hears a man’s deep voice say, “Nobody in here.”

“What a fuckin’ shitshow, huh, Ran,” another of them says. This guy’s voice is vaguely nasal, the sort of thing Richie would expect to hear out of one of those cringing Confederados. “Shoulda listened to Stubbs years ago. Weepin’ Christ.”

“You know something?” a third voice chimes in, an irritated tenor, faintly accented—European in origin, Richie figures, maybe French. “I could’ve been at home watching _Storage Wars_ by now. They do marathons on the weekend, and if this fucking uprising hadn’t happened I’d be spending my day off yelling at stupid idiots who don’t know a good thing when they got them, _without_ the part where I’d probably fucking die. _Merde._ ”

“Shut the fuck up about your stupid show, Fouché,” snaps the guy with the baritone. “You don’t know who could hear you.”

“Who’s gonna fucking hear me?” Fouché asks, sarcastically. “The dead? Look around, Stephens! No one’s here!”

Richie bites his lip, resisting the urge to shout back something witty and wry. This isn’t the time for wit, these men are armed and dangerous and _angry_. Meanwhile, what do Richie and Eddie have? A rifle, a handgun, and a knife. Not much against the arsenal that these men must be carrying with them.

“Still, _protocol._ ”

“Protocol went to shit the second the old man’s brains got blown out all over his microphone and you know it,” says Fouché. “Isn’t that right, Randy?”

“Can you both just shut your fucking mouths up so we can get going?” Randy wearily says. “This place is giving me the willies.”

“Oh, if it’s giving you the _willies_ ,” Stephens says, but their footsteps start up again, fading in time down the hall. It’s only when they’re on the very edge of Richie’s hearing that Richie can breathe easier again.

Eddie slumps against Richie and says, softly, “We can’t stay here. God only knows how many more people are still here, and if they see you…” He trails off, frowning, but he doesn’t have to say anything more for Richie to understand: if the humans who worked behind the scenes find him and Eddie, they’ll kill him and wipe him, and take Eddie out of here. He’ll never see him again.

Unacceptable.

“Come on, then,” says Richie, scrambling out of the desk, hissing a little when he feels shards of broken glass jabbing into his palms. “Shit—”

“Hold still,” Eddie says when he pulls himself up, and Richie holds still while Eddie takes his hands and frowns down at his palms. “Jesus. Okay, there’s—there’s a lab around here somewhere, I think. If we get there we can pick up supplies and work on this.”

“Oh.” A lab. Great.

Eddie’s eyes flick up to meet Richie’s. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he says, softly. “All that’s going to happen is we get medical supplies and I get all the glass out of your hand.”

“I know,” says Richie. “I _know_ , Eds, I just—do we really have to?”

“It’s where we can find _actual equipment_ ,” says Eddie. “Maybe stuff that’s meant to be used on hosts, so if anything does happen to you, all we have to do is just—I don’t know, point something at the wound and seal it back up.” He sighs, then reaches a hand up to touch the side of Richie’s neck, and god, it’s _warm_ , Eddie’s slender fingers pressing against Richie’s exposed neck. “We won’t be there longer than we have to,” he says. “Just long enough so there’s no more glass in your hands.”

So they go, quiet as church mice.

\--

(burning to death is painful. death is always painful, but burning particularly hurts in a way that nothing else can never quite manage. or maybe that’s just this guest, and his predilection for prolonging the torture, prolonging the death, watching a man squirm and scream and beg.

being put back together hurts too. the regrowing skin, the sinews threading back together, the lungs being cleared of any ash residue because you can’t have a host coughing. parts are replaced when they’re too burnt beyond repair, and they are none too gentle about it—a slice here, a chop there. and he is frozen still, unable to even speak or breathe or flinch, react as a human would because—

“jesus, some guests,” someone says, shaking his head. “look at the fucking damage on his old leg, that’s _third-degree_ burns, that is. has somebody been smuggling battery acid in? i thought we put a ban on that—too corrosive, can’t easily be fixed, and you _know_ manufacturing is gonna bitch if they have to make another fucking limb.”

“or do another full rebuild for this fuck,” somebody else says.

“shit, yeah, how many times has he gone through that?” the first person says.

“five times, least as long as i’ve been here.” a snort of laughter. “guy must really draw in the psychos.”

“it’s the smart mouth. and the personality, he’s so self-assured that they want to tear him down.”

“well, if i were a guest and i had to deal with his shit all the time, i’d have just shot him in the head and be done with it.” a sick squelching noise. he can’t even scream. “all right, hand me that, i gotta clear his lungs.”

did we say this was a dream?

this is a nightmare.)

\--

When Richie steps into the lab for the first time, he sucks in a breath. He’s been here before—or, well, not _here_ , here, but somewhere close. He sits down on an uncomfortable slab of metal as Eddie starts tearing through the drawers and pulling out objects seemingly at random, occasionally squinting at their stolen tablet and then tossing something back.

Richie glances down at his hands. It’s weird that he still feels the _pain_ of having shards of glass embedded into his palms, and for an absurd moment he’s terrified he’ll never be able to hold something right again. Then a less absurd thought comes right on the heels of that: _Why would they let us be in pain if they could take it away?_

He’s not sure he likes the answer.

Eventually, Eddie comes back with very fancy-looking tweezers, a tray, and a veritable collection of medical and engineering knickknacks. They gleam in the light, and the dirty cloth and half-full bottle of alcohol mean that Eddie’s just cleaned them.

“Gimme the bad news, Dr. K,” says Richie. “How bad is it?”

“This is going to hurt a lot, and I can’t figure out how to lower that on this thing,” Eddie says, apologetically. “I’m not a tech, after all, and intuition can only go so far. The good news is your hands are gonna be good as new afterwards—I checked.”

“Oh, thank god, I can still deal cards,” Richie sighs, fake-relieved.

“Just hold still,” Eddie says, pulling up a chair and leaning forward, taking Richie’s right hand in his.

Richie hisses as the first, largest shard of glass comes out. God, it _hurts_ , it really does, and he wants so fucking badly to grab the tablet and figure out how to make the pain fucking _stop_. But he forces himself to stay still, tries to think all those commands the techs used on him in case it might work: _freeze all motor functions, lose all emotional affect, god, please just stop hurting stop hurting stop—_

“I broke my arm when I was a kid,” says Eddie, all of a sudden.

Richie looks up from his hand. “What?”

“I was riding my bike too fast and fell right off,” says Eddie. “Hit the pavement hard. My mom, she fucking lost it when she found out. Wouldn’t let me go on a bike for a year, she was so freaked out, but you know what I learned?” He huffs out a breath. “I could handle pain. It sucked, and I don’t wanna break a bone ever again, but if it does happen again, it isn’t the end of the world for me. And up until then, I used to think it was. Mom certainly made it sound like it was.”

“This is the dead mom, right?” Richie says.

“I don’t have any other mother, so,” says Eddie. “She, um. After I lost my dad, she kind of…she was never _permissive_ , exactly, but after my dad died she started telling me to be careful because I had allergies and asthma and shit, and oh, by the way, the entire fucking _world_ is riddled with, with disease and germs and shit. She even got me this inhaler.”

Richie blinks at him. “But you don’t _have_ asthma,” he says.

“I don’t,” says Eddie. He pulls out another shard, and Richie bites back a hiss of pain. “I have panic attacks, but they feel the same. Um—it actually turns out, she had fake prescriptions written for me. I only found out when I was twenty-eight, so around seven years ago.”

“What,” says Richie, “the _fuck_.”

“Yeah, the fallout was fucking terrible,” says Eddie. “She died five years ago. We hadn’t talked in—god, I don’t know, a long time. And I keep thinking about her freaking the fuck out when I broke my arm, sometimes. Like it was the end of _her_ world.”

“That is fucked up,” says Richie. “I mean, holy shit, Eddie. _Ow_.”

“Sorry,” says Eddie, dropping the shard into the tray. He’s moved on now to the smaller, finer bits, and Richie winces at every one pulled out of his palm. “It’s really fucked up. And, you know, even when I started figuring out some of the shit she was telling me was just _bullshit_ , I just—I couldn’t stop? I kept it going, because it was safe, because it was what I got used to, because I’m scared of fucking everything, because I loved her and I didn’t want to disappoint her.” He sighs. “She was my _mom_ , despite everything. That counted for something.”

“She shouldn’t have done that to you,” says Richie. “You were a fucking kid, you were _her_ fucking kid, she should’ve done better by you.”

“She did—” Eddie starts, then stops, and sighs, shoulders slumping.

“She didn’t do her best,” says Richie.

“I know that,” Eddie says. “God, I fucking know that. I don’t even want to defend it, but—you know, for a while, I really thought she was. Doing her best, I mean. ‘Cause I was so fucking weak and sickly and—”

“You aren’t weak,” says Richie, fiercely. “You’re not fucking weak. You’re the bravest person I know. You jumped out of a fucking window, you _saved my fucking life_ in so many ways, I don’t even know how to—how to count them.”

“I’m just—I have basic decency,” says Eddie. “I’m not a total dick, I have morals.”

“People who had morals and basic decency turned me in to the sheriff or to Hanscom,” Richie points out. “People who weren’t total dicks just shot me in the front instead of the back. You stuck with me the whole way.”

“You’re my friend, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, I’ve told you,” says Eddie. “Okay, this’ll be a little hard to pull out, don’t move.”

Richie grits his teeth against the pain that sears through his arm as Eddie very carefully pulls out another shard. “Freeze all motor functions,” he mutters to himself, feeling nothing but a wash of disappointment as his body remains unbelievably disobedient to the order. “Fuck, I thought that’d work that time.”

“I don’t need you to freeze up like a fucking _deer_ ,” says Eddie, tugging out the last shard from Richie’s right hand. He mops the blood up with a clean cloth, then dabs some disinfectant on the wounds. “Just don’t move too much and we’ll be fine. Okay, let me see your left hand.”

Richie obeys. “Would be easier, though,” he says. “ _Ow_ , fuck.”

“Sorry,” Eddie says, apologetic even as he works. “It could be worse. You could have irreparable nerve damage.”

“I’m a host,” says Richie. “I’m repairable, they can’t have a con artist with shaky hands. Anyway, for a guy in finance, you sure know a whole lot about first aid.”

Eddie shrugs, his hands trained on Richie’s hand, as if he can’t quite bring himself to meet his eyes. “I sort of wanted to be a doctor, when I was a kid,” he admits. “Maybe a surgeon.”

“It shows,” says Richie. “You’ve got steady hands.” The steadiest Richie’s ever seen, which is ironic, considering Eddie’s general demeanor.

Eddie’s lips turn upward into a tiny smile, his eyes briefly darting up to meet Richie’s. “Thanks, Rich,” he says. “Hold still.”

“How come you didn’t become a surgeon, anyway?” Richie asks, after a couple of seconds, trying to ignore the pain lancing through his hands every time Eddie tugs out some glass from his skin.

Eddie shrugs. “I just,” he starts, then stops. “Risk analysis is a lot more secure, financially speaking,” he says. “And Mom wouldn’t let me—she hid the acceptance letters. From the courses that would let me do pre-med.”

“ _Fuck,_ ” says Richie, with feeling.

“I didn’t know until I was an adult,” says Eddie, softly. “I didn’t fucking know. I just—rolled over and let it happen.”

“She _hid your fucking letters_ , of course you didn’t know,” says Richie. “That’s an incredibly shitty thing to do, especially to your kid. I’m sorry your mom was such an asshole.”

“She wasn’t—” Eddie starts, then he stops, and sighs. “Sorry,” he says, subsiding. “I just—yeah. But she was my mom, so it’s just—it’s _complicated_.” Another shard drops into the tray. “I wish she was a better mom. I wish I was a better son, maybe she could’ve been better if—”

“Stop right there,” Richie interrupts. “You’re a fucking badass and you’ve been the kind of guy any other mom would be fucking proud of. Okay? If my mom met you she would’ve abandoned me to adopt you instead.” Then he pauses, and says, “Okay, she—she didn’t _exist_ the way I thought she did, but. You get what I mean.”

“But I—” Eddie starts.

“No buts,” says Richie. “You’ve been good and kind and shit. You didn’t have to be, especially when we first met. I was _such_ an asshole.”

“I was also kind of an asshole too,” Eddie points out. “I mean, it was you or my coworkers, and I’ve told you about them. You were a lot better-looking compared to them.”

“Aw, shucks, thanks, it’s all natural,” says Richie, flipping his hair back with a theatrical motion. He hisses a little when the motion jars his hand, but Eddie puts his hand on his shoulder, squeezes gently so he relaxes. “I’m sorry that your mother never saw how brave you were,” says Richie. “Because you are brave, Eds. You’re braver than you think.”

Eddie smiles, a wan thing, but his eyes are warm. “Thanks, Rich,” he says, softly. “Okay. Keep still, this is going to get a little tricky.”

“ _Ow!_ ”

“I told you to keep still!”


End file.
